Petraeus at Langley

[Draggingtree]

Free Beacon:

 

 

 

Petraeus at Langley

 

CIA director quietly pushing reforms, but critics say too much focus on drone war continues

BY: Bill Gertz -

June 12, 2012 5:00 am

CIA Director David Petraeus, who won praise as the Army’s out-of-the-box theorist, is quietly reshaping the CIA toward covert paramilitary operations, and some agency hands say the continued military focus is limiting efforts to improve CIA spies’ mission of stealing secrets.

The retired four-star general—who rewrote the counterinsurgency field manual in the early 2000s and then saw it applied most effectively in Iraq and with less effect in Afghanistan—is considered one of the Army’s most innovative generals.

Now Petraeus has turned his attention to the CIA, one of the United States’ two major intelligence agencies that, post-September 11, has sought to reinvent itself as a premier human-intelligence gathering agency.

In addition to spying successes and failures in recent years, the CIA’s most significant work is its role in a relentless shadow war on terrorism most known for the ongoing covert operations involving Predator and Reaper drone strikes around the world, but mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Petraeus, who was a surprise choice of President Obama to head the CIA in the fall of 2011, has continued the CIA’s drone war that began under Leon Panetta and has become in recent years the agency’s defining policy.

Typical of the agency’s paramilitary focus was last week’s successful drone attack in Pakistan’s tribal area that killed al Qaeda No. 2 leader Abu Yahya al-Libi.

The CIA operation was based on intelligence that identified the terror leader in time to dispatch a drone equipped with a missile. The agency celebrated the attack as one of its most significant operations since the raid to kill Read More

http://freebeacon.co...eus-at-langley/

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

Here's the thing,Petraeus or for that matter any one working for the White House can only do what the President allows him to do. Policy is set in the White House.

 

Now I'm gonna do something waky and out there on the edge...read the article.

[Valin]

Ishmael Jones, a retired CIA operations officer and critic of the agency, said he has heard that Petraeus has instituted some financial reforms that “have led to reductions in some of the more egregious financial shenanigans.”

 

“He’s also responsible for an ongoing investigation of the CIA’s censorship of employees’ books,” Jones, a pseudonym required because of life-long covert status, said. “CIA censors have sought to block written criticism of the agency that contained no secret, confidential, and/or classified material. However, they’ve permitted the publication of secret, confidential, and classified information when the authors are senior bureaucrats and the overall thrust of their books has been favorable to CIA bureaucracy,” he said.

 

Hopefully he can do something about streamlining this process. It can lead to A. pointing out errors (I have no doubts there have been screwups) B. put to rest the rumors about what goes on inside the agency.

 

However, Jones said Petraeus has made no real progress in improving the flexibility of overseas intelligence collection.

 

Yet?